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December 20, 2016

MANGO & Mr. Weenie

We welcomed Mr. Weenie the Chiweenie earlier this year. Pacer wanted him to be his dog but Mr. Weenie had other plans. He literally has attached himself to me. I go no where without the idiot. So it made Pacer a little sad.

Luckily we happened into an adorable orange kitten. Thank you Arroyo family. So now Pacer has his pet. Mango is officially his. I do not want to be accused of trying to steal his cat.

So on the record he is all his!

Tiny house or not doesn't stop us from collecting animals. We love our little zoo…

2016 What a year!

All I can say is WOW! I can't believe we actually survived this year. Well most of us. {We lost our Misha kitty, after the fire.}

I sit her staring at this blank screen and my mind goes blank. I can not believe how lucky we have been this year. February was my last full month of child care. I closed my doors and started a brand new adventure...basically I decided it was time for me to start living my dream. March 1st was day one of an incredible journey. I was officially a full time photographer. I don't know why this didn't happen years ago. I was terrified...actually I am still a little. It's crazy to give a full time gig up for something scary and unknown. My first month was sad, I was super depressed. I worked my tail off to market and promote and get the word out. I thought I must be a fraud, this will never work. I looked at other photographers work and thought I could never be that good. I am far from being perfect but I am a work in progress.

My summer slowly booked up and then I realized I had booked up every weekend throughout the rest of the year. I was shocked. Thrilled but shocked. It gave me the confidence I needed to work my buns off.

2 Sprained ankles & a broken foot: Can't keep me down. I started wedding season in a wheelchair...thank you to those who were so patient with me. Not easy to photograph a wedding with crutches but man I did it!

August 5, 2016 at 6pm: Our lives were turned upside down. We suddenly found ourselves homeless. A fire ravaged our home and destroyed 95% of everything we owned. The greatest blessing of all was that Pacer was home when it happened. He saved the animals. Very little was saved after that. I canceled my photo shoot that evening and came racing home...at a safe speed of course. We spent weeks pulling out stuff and trying to salvage bits and pieces of our lives. It was devastating. I was an emotional wreck. I tried to remind myself it was just stuff. But its hard to sift through so many memories and not feel something. I will be forever grateful for my parents for sweeping in like a mother hen and bringing us into their already crowded house. Going from a king size bed to a full was traumatic… I did overcome that. {barely}

So many people were there to help us and our dear Briana & Aden. Who PS are doing amazing now.

October 4, 2016: The day we signed the dotted line...actually it wasn't dotted. But we did dot our i's and crossed our t's. McMinnville here we come. We bought a new house. 2 months after losing everything we were starting over. It was kinda fun buying a brand new everything. Our house literally is an Ikea showroom. I think pretty much everything came from there. We have half the size of our old house. So we had to go small, compact everything. As I sat at my new kitchen table, in my new house, looking at my new furniture, new paintings, new clothes, new everything… it just didn't feel like home. There was nothing from our old house. It was just like an Ikea showroom. Kinda cold and impersonal. I knew that we were going to be making new memories here but it just didn't feel the same. Sometimes I think this is just temporary and that I will be going back to my home. But then I realize that everything from that past life is now buried in the landfill.

It is sometimes hard to leave behind the past and move forward. I have always adjusted to change, but this one has made a real difference in my life.

Jade Photography: I love what I do so much. I love meeting new people and sharing in on the most amazing day of their lives. Being my first official year of business, I have learned so much. I want to apologize for all my mistakes. What a learning curve! I can not wait to start the 2017 year. I have so many ideas and plans. I know that this year will be so much better. I am not anticipating my house burning down, or any thing else so horribly traumatic. I definitely can not promise that I will not sprain an ankle or two… I do that a lot. {lame weak ankles} But I can promise that I will just as hard and fix past mistakes.